House passes final budget deal

The House on Thursday passed a final budget deal, bringing Republicans one step closer to enacting a spending blueprint that sets the stage for this summer’s spending bills.

The chamber passed the framework, 226-197. It would balance the budget in 10 years without raising taxes, and pave the way for sending an Obamacare repeal to the president’s desk. The Senate will take up the measure next week.

Story Continued Below

“The new Republican majority in Congress made a commitment to the American people to provide positive solutions to the nation’s challenges, to hold Washington accountable and to restore economic vitality so folks all across our country can realize their dreams and hopes for the future,” said the House’s chief budget negotiator, Tom Price (R-Ga.). “With today’s passage … we have provided a positive vision for how we can achieve those goals.”

It’s a victory for House GOP leadership. Many were skeptical they could pass the document given the intraparty divide between defense hawks demanding more money for the Pentagon and fiscal hawks who wanted leadership to stick with strict spending caps laid out in a 2011 deficit reduction law.

Though leadership unequivocally sided with Pentagon-backers by adding $38 billion in extra defense spending, the commitment to an Obamacare repeal helped them muster enough support from the right flank to pass the blueprint.

“How will our kids invest in the future when they’re busy paying for our past?” asked Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “The budget is a different course: We will balance the budget, then start paying down the debt.”

Democrats, meanwhile, decried the bill as an attack on society’s most vulnerable.

“This conference report sends a strong message to students, seniors, and the underprivileged that their dignity and dreams are simply not of concern for the Republican Party,” said Democratic budget conferee Gwen Moore (R-Wis.).

The House passed its first draft of a budget by a 228-199 margin in mid-March. But a handful of Republicans who voted for the budget last time were said to be questioning whether they liked the final agreement negotiated with the Senate.

Sources said some of them were unhappy with out-year spending numbers. The House had initially favored domestic cuts of $760 billion over the next ten years, but the final deal approved on Thursday calls for $495 billion in reductions over the coming decade. Of course, those numbers will change next year when lawmakers adopt a new budget. They don’t hold the force of law.

“I’m really undecided,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) Thursday afternoon, who had voted for the House budget. “I’m going to look at the budget because there’s been some changes… right now I’m undecided.”

GOP leadership spent the afternoon whipping support for the deal, and deputy whips seemed confident when asked about its prospects.

The House was supposed to vote on a military construction and Veterans Affairs Department spending bill Wednesday night and the budget deal Friday.

But leadership postponed the spending bill vote when a bipartisan coalition banded together behind an amendment that would strike part of the Pentagon spending boost.

The budget lays out the framework to give the Pentagon a $38 billion raise through an account usually reserved for war, called the Overseas Contingency Operation account, or OCO. Part of that money is being used in the construction bill.

But by rearranging the schedule and putting the budget vote first, Republicans bought themselves more time to make sure they could defeat the amendment — and throw a bone to Price who told Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) Wednesday night he preferred a vote on the budget first anyway.

The budget cuts hundreds of billions from Medicaid and other safety net programs like food stamps. It keeps domestic spending below the caps.

The spending plan, however, is likely to change when the GOP begins negotiating with President Barack Obama, who says he’ll veto spending bills unless they include a boost for domestic programs, too.